How do you get dictionary or lookup words for own epub ebooks in apple ibooks app?

Answer 1

Make sure you have the latest ibook version on your iphone, iPod touch or ipad, as this will only work with the latest version. Its free to download so shouldn't be a problem. Also need to make sure you have an app store account, but if you have ibooks you probably already have one.

The message you will probably get when you try add epub e-books that are not from the apple book store when you try and look up a word (by touching it and selecting dictionary) is something along the lines of dictionary not available in this language. This is because in the data of your book no language is set especially if you converted it to epub yourself with something like calibre for mac or windows equivalent and so the idevice doesn't know what dictionary it needs.

The reason you need the latest ibooks is the newer versions know that if it comes across a book with no language to use the default dictionary you have downloaded, but obviously if you have never downloaded a dictionary and your books you are trying to read don't have a language to know what dictionary to download this can be impossible for the app to work out.

So go into the ibookstore and download a free book (or a paid one if you actually want a particular paid book, it doesn't really matter as either works and you can delete the book after).

Then try and look up a word in that apple ibook store book (which does have a language set) and the ibooks app will then say you don't have a dictionary downloaded and so you can then download one. Once this is done, try looking up a word in your ibookstore book you just downloaded and it should work if the word is in its dictionary - so try an easy obvious word in the dictionary first that you know will be in.

Now go to your own epub books you have put on your device and look up a word and it should although no language has been set now go to the default dictionary (which it downloaded because it now knew what language to download from your official ibookstore book) to look up the word.

So forget trying to edit your books to set languages in meta data and all that stuff, simply just download the dictionary with a proper ibookstore book that has a language set and then you can use that dictionary with all your non-language-set books.

NB: Some books are copyrighted so only download non-apple bookstore books to your phone if you have purchased from elsewhere, the book is free or you have permission . Not sure what the laws are regarding if you own a paper copy already, but I can't imagine that would be too much harm to have an ebook version too if you have already paid for a paper copy for yourself and you aren't distributing it to other people. However, check the law on that first in your area as I have no legal knowledge in the area, so don't take my opinion as it is ok to do so. Please check before downloading if it is legal.

A good place to download epub books (suitable for ibooks app) ebooks would be ebookee.com or Google books for classics novels.